The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(25)

He sometimes felt the urge to smack Dowd, just to wipe the smug look off his face, one that was there a lot. But Dowd was far too useful, especially now, and he was the most widely read writer on the paper.

“It hasn’t been released.”

“Where did you get it?”

There was the look again.

“Does it really matter?”

Jack took the report out of his hand, leaning back against the driver’s-side door of the Porsche. The heading read “Postmortem Toxicology.”

Jack’s eyes scanned it.

“What does this all mean?”

“What it means,” Dowd said, “is that the kid was suffering from cardiomyopathy, a heart thing that can legit kill young athletes. But his heart only gave out because he was juiced to the gills the day he collapsed.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m not gonna give you the tutorial that the doc gave me,” Dowd said. “But he had this new designer testosterone that still doesn’t show up on league drug tests in his system, along with a legal pain pill called tramadol.”

“And that combo can kill you?”

“When you mix in fentanyl, it can.”

“Fentanyl?”

Dowd nodded.

“Even I know it’s an opiate,” Jack Wolf said. “We’ve written enough about kids OD’ing.”

“Guys in the league know when their next drug test is coming, even though they’re not supposed to. All they need is a heads-up,” Dowd said. “So if they’re in a lot of pain, they get a little boost from fentanyl the day of, to get them through the game.”

Jack was thinking about calling Megan for old times’ sake. He could use the toxicology report as a way of getting her over to the apartment, since it was looking like a slow night.

“I understand why this is a good story,” Jack said, “but how does it help Danny and me with my sister?”

“It doesn’t.”

“So why did you come all the way over here to show it to me?”

“You’ve got two brothers,” Seth Dowd said. “And I happen to know that the younger one was with the late DeLavarious Harmon in the trainer’s room before the game on the day Harmon died.”

Dowd paused and added, “Alone.”

Then he paused again, just briefly.

“That doesn’t mean he gave him the fentanyl, of course.”

Jack Wolf smiled broadly at Seth Dowd.

“But then who gives a shit?” Jack said.





Twenty-Nine



“THIS ISN’T EXACTLY OUR house in Pacific Heights,” Ted Skyler said.

“I’ve discovered I’m much happier here,” I said.

“Without me, you mean.”

I sipped some wine. I hadn’t offered him anything to drink.

“You sold me out to that cockroach Seth Dowd. And for a story that wasn’t even about you.”

“I am here to try to make that right.”

“Why? Because I’m your boss now and have the ability to trade you to Cincinnati?”

He gestured at the sofa. I shrugged and sat down across from him in one of the Perigold armchairs my mother, in a rare display of maternal instinct, had bought for me as a housewarming present.

“Because I feel shitty about what I did, and because I don’t like what your brothers are trying to do to you.”

“Theodore, I’ve got to hand it to you. No one fakes sincerity better than you do.”

I was almost certain that not even his parents still called him that.

“Is there any Scotch?” he said.

“No. Tell me about the sale. Who told you about it?”

“I honestly can’t say.”

“You’re not Seth Dowd,” I said. “You don’t have to protect your source.”

“In this case I do. You’ve got to trust me on that.”

“Trust you?”

“I know I deserve that. I’m just here to tell you that this shit was always about to get real once your dad was out of the way.”

“And Danny was going to sell us all out to the person my father hated the most?”

Ted nodded. “You always said that Danny was the one who hated Joe the most.”

“And what better way to get even?”

“But now his problem is that he needs control of the team back,” Ted said.

“Which he gets if I don’t get the votes at the league meetings.”

“It’s why he and Jack are coming at you this hard.”

“I don’t get what’s in it for Jack. The Wolves are completely separate from the newspaper.”

“The person who told me this also told me that Danny and Jack might have some bigger play going with Gallo,” Ted said.

“Bigger than Gallo getting the San Francisco football team he’s lusted after for his entire lousy life?”

Ted got up off the sofa, went into the kitchen, came back a minute later with a glass of Scotch.

“I knew you were lying.”

I sighed. “Learned from the master.”

“I’ve told you everything I know. But I admit there’s a lot I don’t know.”